We learn to attack the quarter mile on two wheels with tips from a world champion drag racer.

How to Drag Race a Motorcycle

How to Drag Race a Motorcycle

It's a breezy, balmy evening at Las Vegas Motor Speedway's quarter-mile drag strip, where I'm on a quest to learn how to drag race with a motorcycle.

At my disposal: instructor and world champion drag racer Rickey Gadson, a two-lane ribbon of blacked-out tarmac, and a fleet of high-powered Kawasakis, plus a few starter bikes, for initiation. But despite years of sportbike-riding experience and no shortage of amateur stoplight antics, I'm about to learn quickly that there's more to maximum acceleration than merely mashing the throttle and popping the clutch.

How do you hurtle a 567-pound motorcycle across 1320 feet of pavement in about the same time it takes to read this paragraph? With a little help (okay, a lot of help) from a veteran racer, I learned how to coax these powerful machines to hit the traps in less than 10 seconds.

The Tools

The Tools

Out of the box, Kawasaki's Ninja ZX-14 has nearly 200 hp on tap and a stronger power-to-weight ratio than the fastest production car in the world, the multimillion dollar Bugatti Veyron. But that doesn't mean the bike is fully optimized for these purposes. "Drag racing is not just about being a good rider," Rickey Gadson says. "It's also about setting up the chassis to do so."